As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I have seen a lot of GOAT talk recently, which got me thinking about who is the greatest Supreme Court Justice of all time. We have been running a poll here on the blog, and thank you to everyone who participated.

Chief Justice John Marshall was the clear winner in the pre-1900 category, with 68% of the vote. His nearest competitor, Justice Joseph Story, had only 36% of the vote. For the 1900-1950 Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes won a resounding 60% of the vote, with Justice Robert Jackson coming in second with 28% of the vote.

It was the modern, post-1950 Court where things got interesting. The surprising winner was Justice Antonin Scalia, with 64% of the vote. Chief Justice William Rehnquist came in second at 36% of the vote, with Justice Hugo Black coming in third at 32% of the vote.

Since we had such clear winners in each category, I decided to do a runoff between the top three. The survey is below. Please pick just one answer.